Few have been lucky enough to live in such bright sunlight as I was. She was always dazzling, right from when she was a little girl, right from when I first joined her. Mary. My Mary. Mary Queen of Scots you call her. She dazzled when she ruled over the courts of great men, but she was just as much a Queen when she was locked in darkness or held in chains. In life, in death, in eternity, she was, is and will always be my Queen.
It is now my privilege to return to this earth to tell her story, many years now after the tragic, glorious, unjust events of her too short life. And where better than Buxton? On a day when the sun is shining and the river runs bright and clear, where on God’s earth is more glorious than Buxton? We were happy there too. As happy as we were anywhere during the days she spent in England.
We used to visit Buxton so my Lady could…. No, if you want to hear the details of our story you must come and meet me personally. Then you can judge for yourself the truth and sincerity of my tale. This ‘blogging’ you new Elizabethans are so keen on does not suit a well-bred woman of the sixteenth century such as myself.
But I have been told I must say something about myself, so here it is, although who will find interest in it I do not know.
I joined her Majesty when we were both mere children. She was six years old and being sent to France to live in preparation for her marriage to the French royal heir, the Dauphin Francis. There were four of us who travelled with her as her maids-of-honour, all named Mary, all from great Scottish families. I was not the first among us – that was Mary Fleming, her blood was the noblest – but I was to be the last. I stayed with our Queen longer than anyone, always by her side from those days when we were little more than infants. Not that my family was an insignificant one. My father was George, 6th Lord Seton. My mother Marie was French herself, having come to Scotland as maid-of-honour to Mary of Guise. You might say I was born to live my life beside a Queen. That was the path God had chosen for me.
Our Lord chose me as witness to the incredible, terrible, tumultuous events of Queen Mary’s life; a life that…. But there I go again, talking about her. I promised not to do that. As I said come and see me if you want to hear her story.
The storms of fate battered us both and hurled us from place to place without a care for our safety. Wherever she was thrown, I followed. From Scotland to France, from France to Scotland, from Scotland to England. From throne to prison cell I was with her. In Buxton too. Beautiful Buxton. A calm pool amidst the raging tempest of our times. The very building we stayed in still stands. You call it ‘The Old Hall Hotel’. In our day it was brand new. A fine new building from which to take the waters and breath the clean air of the hills.
What saddens me most is that I was not with her at the end. I had been sent away by then. To France again, when I spent my long declining years in a convent. Safe, at least. Safe in the arms of the Lord and away from the cruel whims of a vicious world.
What a life I lived, and what a story I have to tell. Come join me to hear it all.